Mainstream GTX 550 Ti rumored for March 15 launch

VR-Zone has discovered entries for two unreleased GeForce graphics cards after rummaging through Nvidia's 266.7x beta drivers. The first card is named the GeForce GTX 550 Ti and is based on Nvidia's GF116 graphics processor. The 40nm chip is rumored to feature a 128-bit memory bus, a TDP of 110W or less, and it will supposedly be paired with a gig of GDDR5 memory. The GTX 550 Ti's rear I/O panel carries two dual-link DVI-I ports alongside one mini-HDMI output.

It also physically resembles the PCB design of Nvidia's GeForce GTS 450, but since it carries the GTX branding we're expecting some respectable performance -- at least as far as mainstream cards go. The GTX 550 Ti is said to outpace the Radeon HD 5770 by up to 35% in DirectX 11 and 20% in DirectX 10. Nvidia supposedly plans to launch the GTX 550 Ti on March 15 and early pricing estimates put the card at $200 -- $50 cheaper than the more powerful GTX 560 Ti.

Meanwhile, the second card spotted by VR-Zone is the anticipated GeForce GTX 590. We've known about the dual-GPU product since late last year and there doesn't appear to be any new details to share about the hardware. Nonetheless, the new driver entries fuel the GTX 590's rumored launch date of late February or early March. Pricing remains unknown but the card effectively doubles the $500 GeForce GTX 580's specifications so it won't be cheap, that's for certain.